I'll take "the right customer base" for $50 please Alex.
which is NOT the current dsl/cable-modem user, obviously?
Correct.
Rick Adams and Mike O'Dell had an idea in 1987. How is this any different?
mumble, mumble giant telephone company mumble mumble... In all seriousness, I'm not sure this is any different. Their idea, if I got it right, was 'ip everywhere'. Perhaps providing smaller scale 'good' colo with strong abuse/support is possible, just don't get greedy and get gigantic.
The original idea was for USENIX to fund provisioning commercial UUCP and Usenet access. Go beyond the Federal green-stamp and .edu gardens, which was NOT the same as going into direct competition with The Well. It was sparse. It went beyond the then-edge of UUCP and Usenet provisioned transport and content, but it assumed the existance of a damping function, and at this point in time, it isn't a waste of time to mull over both of the positions argued later by Eric Allman and Peter Honneyman. Eric